Agriculture Canada has received good marks for responding appropriately to a three-year-old conflict of interest case.
Auditor general Sheila Fraser highlighted Agriculture Canada in a 2007 report about conflict of interest in the federal government, citing a handful of employees working both sides of the fence.
By day, they processed Canadian Agricultural Income Stabilization program applications. In their spare time, knowing the types of applications most likely to trigger payments, they helped farmers fill out their applications for a fee.
Fraser said it was inappropriate and told the department to create a system to prevent or expose potential conflict of interest situations.
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Last week in a follow-up report, Fraser said the department responded appropriately.
Employees now receive education about potential conflict of interest situations and are required to report regularly on potential violations.
“It is very clear, they took action after that report came out, made it very clear to employees that they could not be at one time assessing these requests that were coming in from producers and then helping them to complete the forms in the evenings,” Fraser told an Oct. 26 news conference.
Her latest report notes that the department has changed.
“(Agriculture Canada) now includes clauses in application materials that require public servants who process farm income support applications to declare they have no conflict of interest,” she wrote.
“Public servants are told not to help applicants fill out application forms for a fee. Public servants and former public servants must identify themselves when filling out applications to receive income support for themselves or others.”
As well, a special Agriculture Canada group has been formed to process aid applications from present or former departmental employees “to ensure impartiality. Conflict-of-interest training is now mandatory for staff working in all grant and contribution programs.”
All new Agriculture Canada employees attend orientation courses that include instruction on conflict of interest issues.
However, Fraser complained that Treasury Board, a central agency that is supposed to provide conflict of interest guidelines to all government departments, has not done so and there is a vacuum of rules across the Ottawa bureaucracy.
She said individual departments are trying to set up conflict of interest alert systems, but there are no cross-government guidelines on the issue.
“What we are recommending or we have noted is that they need to do a broader assessment across the departments of where risks of conflict of interest could occur and then take the necessary action to try to identify them and then to make sure that they don’t occur,” Fraser told the news conference.
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